Colonial survey data collection was uneven and often fabricated by officials

Evidence

How often were central authorities dealing with “loose” local talk and how often did they know it? Facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the other way around. Rumor was a source of “what happened” in subtle if unmanaged ways. But then the archives themselves are, as Paul Veyne notes, “mutilated knowledge,” sometimes no less so than rumors themselves. Rumors registered what people believed could have happened in the past and what could happen in the future. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial classification was piecemeal and routinely unsettled by epistemic uncertainties.; Colonial officials’ family histories shaped and discredited their accounts; Colonial officials’ disjointed accounts shared vocabulary but not sources of knowledge. (+14 more)

Related

• Colonial officials’ family histories shaped and discredited their accounts (similarity 0.95)
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse (similarity 0.91)
• Colonial bureaucracies collected information largely irrelevant to actual decisions (similarity 0.89)
• Rumor blurred the boundary between witnessed and envisioned events in colonial knowledge. (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial officials’ disjointed accounts shared vocabulary but not sources of knowledge. (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial officials could transmute rumor into actionable evidence (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial knowledge production was driven by uncertainty, not clarity (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial authority rested on incomplete knowledge and hierarchies of rumor, not omniscience (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial officials ritualistically framed rumor-derived reports as verified facts (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial archives hide a hierarchy of credibility weighing whose witness counted. (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial officials suppressed knowledge of Sumatran plantation violence while distinguishing rumor from fact (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial commissions relied on hearsay and common knowledge rather than investigation (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial administrative documents exceeded the demands for proof and causation (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial archives should be treated as ethnographic sites not extraction sources (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial classification was piecemeal and routinely unsettled by epistemic uncertainties. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Colonial officials ritualistically framed rumor-derived reports as verified facts #corroborates (0.70)
• Colonial officials’ disjointed accounts shared vocabulary but not sources of knowledge. #expands (0.65)
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse #corroborates (0.65) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274
• Colonial commissions relied on hearsay and common knowledge rather than investigation #corroborates (0.60)
• Colonial administrative overviews signaled assumed mastery rather than real knowledge #corroborates (0.60) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 143
• Colonial archives hide a hierarchy of credibility weighing whose witness counted. #expands (0.60)
• Colonial officials’ family histories shaped and discredited their accounts #complicates (0.55)
• Colonial bureaucracies collected information largely irrelevant to actual decisions #corroborates (0.55)
• Colonial knowledge production was driven by uncertainty, not clarity #corroborates (0.55)